


Shouldn't Have Listened

by Bettybot (Lizbettywrites)



Series: The Ways They Said "I Love You" [18]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 21:17:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13489968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizbettywrites/pseuds/Bettybot
Summary: What could have been if Lost Light #4 had gone differently.





	Shouldn't Have Listened

“Slaggit. You know I'm no good at this. You're always making things complicated. Inconvienient, that's what you are.” Whirl shuffled his pedes, staring at the floor as he scuffed it, unable to face the gray frame in front of him. He still had a good fifty-eight minutes before the funeralgoers would start arriving, and he was going to get this off his chest well before then.

It wouldn’t do to berate a dead mech in public, after all. “And what gives you the right to end this way, huh? How come you couldn't let me do it to start with, but you're willing to do it yourself? Okay, I guess that's not fair. You didn't really plan it like this. But that's no excuse. It sure feels like it, the way this went down.”

“I shouldn't have listened to you, you pointy fragger. Now who am I supposed to tell ‘I told you so?’ It was all so simple before you showed up. Cons: bad. Whirl: bad. Eyebrows and maybe Bee: good. Easy, right? I fragging hated you for interrupting: you know that. Couldn't wait to kill you myself. Then you got me sucked into your pathetic love life, and we’re practically friends.

“Well. I guess now we're nothing. And another thing: how am I supposed to avenge your stupidity, huh? If you could have just let me tell—or told him yourself—I oughta kill him, ‘swhat I oughta do. Hah. You’d come crawling back out of the Pit and drag me down with you. Nah, you’d know better.

“But I won't do it. It's not what you would have wanted. Guess you rubbed off on me.” He shuddered just as the bay doors slammed open and a white shape careened to the side of the pyre berth.

Tailgate’s visor left staticky trails when he moved. His EM field flared and flickered dangerously.

“Why?” he screamed at the grayed-out body. “Why didn't you say something?” His little panic legs collapsed underneath him. “How could you keep this a secret?” Tiny fists slammed onto the berth’s surface, and Whirl snapped.

“Haven't you fragging well done enough?” he hissed, armor fluffing out. “All he ever did was love you! The slagger cared so much that he'd rather die than hurt your feelings. That's why. And this is the thanks he gets!”

Tailgate's vents heaved. “I didn't know—I didn't mean to—”

He took one threatening step around the pier, then another, toward the minibot. “I don't know what to make of you. You’re the reason the purple people eater got involved in my life. Or at least the reason I got involved in his. And you took him out of it again. Without meaning to.”

His optic was growing uncomfortably hot. “How about you do something on purpose for once in your pathetic existence and bring him back!” His vocalizer screeched under the strain of his hoarse yell.

He made the mistake of glancing at the empty face of his friend’s corpse. His legs gave out beneath him, pitching him forward so he sprawled beside Tailgate, the two of them kneeling in front of the berth as if in a twisted kind of mock piety.

“I'm sorry,” Tailgate whispered, maybe to Whirl, maybe to Cyclonus’ extinguished spark.

Whirl didn't stop him from wrapping his tiny arms around his shoulders. He just dropped his head against the minibot’s chestplate.

“Me too, marshmallow.”


End file.
